Days of infamy: Twin legacies of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor

Cadet Max Perez carries Cadet Robert-Josef Heitzer as the Golden Buffalo Battalion s Alpha Company trains very early Thursday morning in the University of Colorado Recreation Center. Perez, a CU ROTC student who was in high school 6 miles from the Pentagon on 9/11, says the terrorist attacks prompted him to enlist. He already has served in Iraq.
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PAUL AIKEN
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Dec. 7, 1941, was a "church day" for Leo Hill, a World War II veteran who now lives in Boulder.

On his way home from his Sunday service, Hill stopped at a gas station to visit with a friend who delivered the news that would define his generation: The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Hill was 17.

"Within days, every man, woman and child was finding out what they had to do for the war," Hill remembers. "The remarkably nice thing about it was we were all in it together. We were united and anxious to get at it."

Tuned into the radio at his family's southern Colorado home, Hill heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt deliver a speech to the nation, calling the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked "a date which will live in infamy."

* * *

Sept. 11, 2011, was a "school day" for Max Perez, an Iraq veteran and student now attending the University of Colorado. He was in his first-period English class at a high school 6 miles south of the Pentagon.

He watched in horror on television as the second tower of the World Trade Center was struck by a hijacked airliner. His principal's voice came over the intercom: "We're under attack."

Time magazine and newspaper headlines across the country declared 9/11 a "day of infamy," echoing Roosevelt's famed speech.

* * *

Pearl Harbor and 9/11 -- two surprise attacks on U.S. soil that thrust the country into very different wars --often are the subject of comparison by historians and those who served during wartime.

Yet when it comes to the numbers, the two attacks' impacts were quite different.

In the decade since nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Penn., only a sliver of the American population actually has gone to war. About 2 million soliders in America's all-volunteer military deployed -- first to Afghanistan, then to the less-directly linked Iraq -- in the 10 years since 9/11.

Leo Hill holds a picture of himself when he was in the Air Force during World War II. Hill, who lives in Boulder, enlisted following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He says 9/11 did not impact the nation as deeply and thoroughly as Pearl Harbor.
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CLIFF GRASSMICK
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By comparison, 13 million Americans served overseas during the much shorter World War II -- and six out of every 10 of those soliders were drafted into the military.

In remembrance of today's 10-year anniversary of 9/11, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans is displaying a 10,000-pound, 10-foot-tall beam from the north tower of the World Trade Center. Resting next to it is a preserved piece of the USS Arizona, the iconic battleship that sank during the attack on Pearl Harbor, which, all told, claimed more than 2,400 lives.

"The similarity of these cataclysmic events is that our nation had not declared war on anyone and we were not expecting these attacks," said Clem Goldberger, spokeswoman for World War II museum. "They were surreal, surprise attacks. Another similarity is the outpouring of the shared national sentiment that followed both.

"There was collective shock, rage, fear and patriotism."

Yet while both attacks were defining moments in history, some -- including World War II veterans living here in Boulder -- say that's where the comparisons end.

Pearl Harbor was almost exclusively a military target.

The enemy behind 9/11 was more elusive, and fewer Americans rushed to recruiting stations to join the fight in the so-called war on terror.

Concessions that civilians made on the home front -- such as being subjected to longer airport security lines -- are small in scale compared to the grand lifestyle changes made by those of the "greatest generation."

"After Pearl Harbor, the nation was galvanized like never before," Goldberger said. "That resulted in social changes -- like the beginning of women in the workforce. After the war, there were advances in civil rights. It was a life-changing, society-changing event."

Historians doubt that 9/11 will result in such significant changes, Goldberger said.

That changed on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, crashing into the Pentagon and each of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a passenger revolt.

Classmates in Perez's Washington, D.C.-area high school feared their parents who worked at the Pentagon were dead. When the first tower was struck, Perez surmised it could have been the catastrophic result of, perhaps, pilot error. Watching the second plane smash into the World Trade Center live on television felt surreal, Perez recalls.

Perez enlisted in the U.S. Army after high school graduation -- a commitment that sent him on two tours of duty in Iraq. He was deployed to Ramadi from August 2004 to August 2005 and to Baghdad from October 2006 to January 2008.

"When I went overseas, I had a real good sense that what I was doing was right," Perez said. "It was for a good cause to defend our country."

Now Perez is enrolled at CU, working toward his electrical and computer engineering degree. The Army cadet plans to be commissioned as an officer in December 2012, upon graduation.

Today, he said, will be a day of reflection for him.

"I'm going to stop and think about our country. Our freedoms. Our way of life. And, most importantly, the family members and those who lost their lives on Sept. 11."

CU senior Louis Tuey, 29, interrupted his college career so that he could enlist in the U.S. Navy after 9/11.

"It wasn't another country that attacked us, it was a terrorist organization and the lines are more blurred," he said. "Throughout World War II, there was nationwide support. Now I feel like a lot of people don't understand what's going on, so they don't support it."

The morning of the attacks, Tuey -- who was enrolled at San Diego State University -- had woken up early to attend a morning prayer group. He watched the events of 9/11 unfold on television.

Before returning to college to earn an engineering degree, Tuey served for six years. For four of them, he was stationed on the USS Helena.

Four of the Navy's ships have been named USS Helena -- including one that was commissioned in 1939 and saw heavy action during World War II, eventually sinking in 1943.

The 'greatest generation'

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States immediately pegged its enemy -- and that marks a significant difference between World War II and today's conflict in the Middle East, said Hill, who rose to the rank of first lieutenant during World War II.

As an 18-year-old with a head full of curly red hair, Hill enlisted in the Air Force. In February 1943, he went on active duty.

"There are more contrasts and differences than there are similarities in my mind," said Hill, 87. "Simply, with Pearl Harbor, we learned quite soon we were at war with the Japanese, the Germans and Italians."

At a recent roundtable discussion with those who live at Boulder's Frasier Meadows and who came of age during World War II -- including former prisoners of war, a nurse and other soldiers -- the consensus among them was that Pearl Harbor is not analogous to 9/11.

"We haven't completed the job," Hill said of 9/11's aftermath. "We don't know quite who our enemy is. It's not like the gratification of getting the job done. We knew who we were fighting (in World War II) and we won.

"Now we don't know who we're fighting and we haven't won."

The Boulder veterans also reminisced about the continued support they received from those back home -- as "Rosie the Riveter" took over factory jobs, and civilians planted victory gardens and used only a few gallons of gas a week in patriotic compliance with rations.

Ed Putzier, 86, a retired Naval officer, recalls civilians helping out on his family's farm in Minnesota during his absence. Thelma Haydon, 98, was a nurse who, while the country was at war, dedicated herself to aiding wounded soldiers.

"They were at home backing us up," said Lloyd Hansen, a lieutenant colonel who served in the Air Force from 1943 to 1964 and was a POW for 23 months in Germany.

Remembering the solidarity on the home front brought tears to the 94-year-old's eyes.

When he returned home from war to his wife, he remembers pulling off the highway to get gas.

Mistaking the fuel rations for trash, Hansen had thrown them out. When he explained to the gas station attendant he had just returned from war, the attendant filled up his tank without question.

Hansen's call to serve was clear.

In December 1941, while on a bus en route to Omaha, Neb., Hansen recalls seeing a newsboy selling a special edition newspaper bearing the headline "Pearl Harbor has been bombed." Hansen asked the bus driver to pull over at a mailbox, and, at that very moment, he sent his letter to enlist in the service.

Three days later he was commissioned, married and sent overseas.

Training soldiers

While in Iraq in 2003, Army Maj. David Rozelle made it a tradition before each mission to kiss a picture of his wife, listen to the message she had recorded for him and say a short prayer to God to take care of his unborn child if he didn't return home.

On June 21, 2003, the Humvee that Rozelle was driving detonated an anti-tank mine. In the moments of silence after the violent explosion, Rozelle saw blood on his arms, shrapnel absorbed by his bulletproof vest and bits of bone squeezing from his right boot.

The explosion had blown off Rozelle's right foot and part of his leg below the knee. After three combat tours in Iraq, two of which came after his injury, Rozelle is now the commanding officer of CU's Army Reserve Officer Training Corps program.

He said that he's now training some of the best officers for the Army.

Rozelle wears an artificial foot and leg and said that it's his recovery and return to war that define him, not the landmine injury.

Cadets are motivated when they see Rozelle running with them. But his injury is also a reminder of the reality of war, he said.

Since 9/11, the ROTC program in Colorado has flourished and the number of cadets signed up is the highest it has been in a decade, Rozelle said. About one-third of the 225 cadets statewide are on the Boulder campus.

Prior to the terrorist attacks, Rozelle explained, officers in training went into the Army with basic skills and then the Army provided them with on-the-job training.

"After 9/11, your on-the-job training is in Iraq or Afghanistan," he said.

As a result, the training has been compressed in the ROTC phase and Rozelle said the Army can't afford to wait until students graduate to train them as leaders.

When Rozelle interviews high school students about why they want to be future cadets, some say military service is a family tradition. Others say they want to help out their country at a time of war.

"So few Americans are touched by this war," Rozelle said. "These young men and women who are signing up now are especially brave. They are true statesmen."

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